Technology blog + Netflix | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog+media/netflix
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Boot up: Billion-pixel Mars view, Microsoft's Amazon-killer, Apple's games console plans and morehttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/21/mars-rover-microsoft-amazon-apple-tv
Plus Pirate Bay jailing, Hemlock Grove, killer robots, Instagram videos, facial-recognition blocking and a device to find your lost keys<p>A quick burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team</p><p>A billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, offers armchair explorers a way to examine one part of the Red Planet in great detail.</p><p> The first NASA-produced view from the surface of Mars larger than one billion pixels stitches together nearly 900 exposures taken by cameras onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along the rover's route.</p><p>Microsoft Corp. recently explored rolling out an e-commerce marketplace aimed at taking on heavyweights Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc., according to people briefed on the company's plans.</p><p> The software giant held discussions with retailers and technology companies about a marketplace, proposing to equip it with an array of merchants, as well as a unified shopping cart and broad shipping options, according to these people. To lure shoppers, Microsoft was considering subsidizing the price of goods on its e-commerce service using a portion of advertising dollars merchants spend on Microsoft's Bing Web-search engine or elsewhere, said the people.</p><p>Reveal Labs today launched a crowdfunding campaign in search of $20,000 to fund its Tile Bluetooth device. The company hopes that money raised will help show if people are interested and to get it closer to production. Tile aims to be that device people place on things such as wallets, keys, luggage, phones, or anything else to help you find it no matter where it is.</p><p>Let's just be honest... we are at the absolute end of the road for gaming consoles. There is no reason that you are going to need a dedicated gaming machine in the next year or two -- you probably don't even need one now. What makes this more troubling for Microsoft's upcoming Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 is that this big, heavy, bulky, hot and loud gaming consoles have to last for an extremely long time in order for them to be profitable for each company. We have been on a 7 to 8-year life cycle for game consoles for the last couple decades, and that model isn't going to be sustainable going into the future.</p><p>As his defense attorney expected, a Swedish court has found Gottfrid &quot;anakata&quot; Svartholm Warg guilty of &quot;invasion of Nordea's mainframe,&quot; aggravated fraud, and attempted aggravated fraud. He was sentenced (Swedish) to two years in prison.</p><p> The Pirate Bay cofounder will also likely have to face related charges in a high-profile hacking case in neighboring Denmark, but the Swedish and Danish legal systems have not yet determined if or when he will be extradited.</p><p>Netflix announced this week that it is renewing its original horror series Hemlock Grove for a second season, with 10 new episodes set to premiere in 2014. The news may come as a surprise to some: Netflix has spent a lot of effort promoting Arrested Development and House of Cards, but hasn't made a big fuss about Hemlock. Critics who watched the show hated it, calling it a dud, a flop and &quot;the company's first truly bad series.&quot;</p><p> And if you're anything like me, then you have never seen Hemlock Grove pop up in your Netflix recommendations. Heck, chances are, you may have never heard about Hemlock before reading this article. But that's OK; Netflix didn't make the show for us. It's aimed at an audience of teenage horror fans. And Netflix had the numbers to know that this audience was engaged enough on the streaming service to make a title like Hemlock Grove succeed.</p><p>Of the 1,000 people surveyed by University of Massachusetts-Amherst researchers, 55 percent said they oppose autonomous weapons, with most answering &quot;strongly opposed.&quot; Almost 20 percent answered &quot;not sure.&quot; Answers were consistent across political affiliations, ages, genders, regions, education and income levels, but not service status: 73 percent of active military personnel responded with disapproval. Language such as &quot;stopping killer robots&quot; and &quot;banning fully autonomous weapons&quot; garnered similar responses.</p><p>Instagram remains one of the best-designed photo-sharing applications. But the new video tools aren't nearly as intuitive as, say, the double-tap gesture Instagram invented to allow users to &quot;like&quot; a photo. Recording a video is a buggy mess. The &quot;stand-out&quot; features -- filters, a video stabilizer, and the ability to choose which frame represents the video in your friends' Instagram feeds -- are lackluster at best. The entire thing feels like something that should have been introduced a year ago.</p><p>If you're freaked out about the thought of Google Glass users one day being able to use facial recognition technology that's capable of spotting you wherever you go, then some researchers in Japan may have a solution for you. Engadget reports that researchers at Japan's National Institute of Informatics have designed a pair of glasses that obscure your face to prevent facial recognition algorithms from locking onto it.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/21/mars-rover-microsoft-amazon-apple-tv">Continue reading...</a>TechnologyMicrosoftCuriosity roverMarsNasaApplePirate BayNetflixRobotsInstagramGoogle GlassTwitterFri, 21 Jun 2013 06:30:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/21/mars-rover-microsoft-amazon-apple-tvPRGet even closer to Mars' surface with NASA's latest panoramic photographyPRStuart Dredge2013-06-21T06:30:00ZTechnology needs to be freed up to find the Next Big Thinghttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/feb/11/technology-tablet-smartphones-next-big-thing
Tablets were the last Big Thing, but the potential is there for plenty more, if cultural resistance wasn't so strong<p><em>Looking for next big wave of products or services, for something as big as smartphones or, more recently, tablets, we see technology kept in check by culture.</em></p><p><strong>To qualify as a Big Thing these days, a product – or a service,</strong> or maybe something hardly more effable than a meme (think social networks) – has to assume a value in the order of $100bn worldwide. The value needn't be concentrated in a single company; indeed, the more boats that are lifted by the rising tide, the better. The revenue from the Next Big Thing might be divvied up among today's hardware and software giants or shared with companies that are currently lurking under the radar of industry statistics.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/feb/11/technology-tablet-smartphones-next-big-thing">Continue reading...</a>TechnologyTablet computersSmartphonesGoogleAppleTelevisionNetflixMediaMicrosoftBlackBerry corporationNokiaiPhoneAppsiPadAmazon.comComputingMon, 11 Feb 2013 11:10:11 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/feb/11/technology-tablet-smartphones-next-big-thingNick Ansell/PATablets were the last Big Thing, but the potential is there for plenty more, if cultural resistance wasn't so strong. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PANick Ansell/PATablet computers have boosted Dixons Retail. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PAJean-Louis Gassée2013-02-11T11:10:11ZTech Weekly podcast: Netflix arrives in the UKhttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/audio/2012/jan/11/tech-weekly-podcast-netflix-uk
Neil Hunt from Netflix discusses its UK launch, social viewing and its plan to tempt you to stream movies to your home <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/audio/2012/jan/11/tech-weekly-podcast-netflix-uk">Continue reading...</a>NetflixVideo on demandDigital mediaOnline TVAmazon Prime Instant VideoiPlayerTechnologyMediaInternetCES 2012CESWed, 11 Jan 2012 12:54:05 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/audio/2012/jan/11/tech-weekly-podcast-netflix-ukPublic DomainNetflixPresented by Aleks Krotoski and produced by Scott Cawley2012-01-11T12:54:05Z